What is the war on drugs actually achieving?

A room full of cannabis plants which were found during a police raid in Woolwich, south-east London. Photograph: Glenn Copus/PA

As a young constable I was shocked when I saw the "pit", a hospital room used for the temporary storage of the latest collapsed "junkie" picked up from the pavements of the West End. After minimal treatment these individuals awoke and staggered off, back to their next hit, hoping it wasn't going to be their last. Some of them ended up in the morgue.

I suppose that I arrested as many 'druggies' as anybody else on the team and the thumbnail of cannabis found in the bottom of their pockets found its way onto the charge sheet as a matter of routine. Sometimes triumphant detectives came back to the police station with a few pot plants they had found on some hippy's window ledge. After a few weeks of healthy, well-watered growth on the crime squad's own window sill, this now very impressive evidence arrived on the window sill (well, evidence bench) of the magistrates court.

I don't remember many middle class visitors to the charge room, although their children did pop in from time to time with small offerings of cannabis. This imbalance in enforcement was an obvious result of the fact that officers usually patrol the streets, not the post-prandial drawing rooms or VIP areas of the drug taking elite.

I commanded or oversaw many anti-drug operations. In one central London council estate we arrested nearly 30 street dealers in a co-ordinated swoop. It was a very professionally executed operation, a credit to the efforts of all those involved and motivated by a desire to tackle overt street dealing in heroin and crack cocaine. Some undercover officers put themselves at risk as they immersed themselves in the addicts' lifestyle (showers not an option) and became accepted by the dealers. Others were at risk of falling off ladders as they assumed the role of observant decorators. The evidence was so good that all those arrested pleaded guilty. And one building ended up with five coats of paint.

A much bigger operation in an East Anglian city successfully targeted more than 100 street dealers. It was hailed as a great success by local and national politicians, much as any large seizure of drugs, or police "crackdown", is celebrated as evidence of the success of the "war on drugs". If success were measured by the volume of arrests and drugs seized you could conclude that the police service had done well; however, judged on success in containing the market and reducing harm, the outcome is quite different.

It wasn't that I experienced a single apocalyptic moment that the war on drugs was a disaster, but during over thirty years of police service I came to realise that what we were doing was very expensive, ineffective and even counter-productive.

Nowhere in the country is free from drugs and the associated crime epidemic. Criminals continue to make huge profits, corroding and corrupting public and private lives. They target each new generation of children and create addicts who are ostracised, become diseased and die unnecessarily.

It all seemed so pointless; what were we achieving? The enthusiastically spun revolving door of criminal justice took in and spat out drug dealers, often addicts themselves, to deal again. Young men and women, arrested for little more than youthful experimentation emerged with their young lives forever tainted with a criminal conviction. If your child was arrested for drug possession would you want them to be prosecuted and convicted or guided, supported and, if necessary, treated?

A different approach in that same East Anglian city offered a choice between treatment and arrest to prolifically offending addicts. They almost invariably chose treatment, and the detectives on the team were surprised to learn that not only did this save time and precious resources, but it was also the most effective way for tackling burglary they had ever seen. We thought and acted in new ways and achieved better results, for everybody.

Prosecuting users is misguided and counter productive; prosecuting dealers without tackling demand or their profits doesn't work. The criminals make about £6 billion a year while the criminal justice system spends over £10 billion a year.

If the money wasted on misinformation, enforcement and condemnation had been spent on tackling the underlying causes, so many lives blighted by drugs and crime could have been different. There are a number of alternative methods available, but sadly we can't hold a rational public debate as serving officers or politicians who dare challenge the "war on drugs" orthodoxy justifiably fear being pilloried by our national press.

We need a comprehensive overhaul of our enforcement practices, encouraging partnership, avoiding the false tension between enforcement and harm reduction, and looking for effective deployment of resources directed towards achieving new, realistic, objectives – not some pie in the sky dream of a drug free society.